Flash! My replacement K3 is here

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my K3‘s screen failed Saturday night.

I called them that night: my replacement is here today.

I try not to make this stuff just personal, and hope that it helps people, so I want to give you some of my experience with setting up the replacement.

Oh, personal thing first: this new one’s name is Pete, after Pete Best. I consider Pete Best the fifth Beatle, although I know there are other candidates for that title (Stu Sutcliffe, Brian Epstein, George Martin). I’ve just always like the story (true or not) that Pete was replaced because they wanted Paul to be the “cute one”, and “chicks dug” Pete. Yes, I know he may have refused to wear the suit or do the hair thing or may not have been musically flexible enough…but I kind of like “cute” being a negative. Oh, and I’m not going to say what that might say about Ringo. 😉

Here was the most interesting thing: this Kindle came deregistered (not sure why, but probably because it was “ordered” by Kindle Customer Service). While it was deregistered, I could still use my wi-fi (after I set it up). With a strictly 3G Kindle, I believe you can’t use the Whispernet without registering it. Thanks to one of my regular readers (and a Bezos Street Irregular…BSI), tuxgirl, for the heads up to this possibility.

This also changes a recommendation I used to make, that deregistering a Kindle you give to a child would make it so it couldn’t connect to the Whispernet. Some parents worry about that, because they don’t want their minor children going to inappropriate sites. That can be controlled to a large extent on a computer with so-called “nanny” software. This becomes more of an issue with the K3, since the browser is so much better. You still don’t see color or video, but you could see some very adult pictures. Now, even if the Kindle is deregistered, it can still surf the web through wi-fi. Worth noting, for those of you who want parental controls.

How did I know it wasn’t registered? I couldn’t do a sync & Check for New Items. I needed to do that to connect to my Archives.

Interestingly, I used to be able to get my serial number off the back of the device. It may be there in teeny tiny print, but I didn’t see it. Instead, you get it from

Home-Menu-Settings-Device Info

I store that serial number off the device, by the way.

If a Kindle wasn’t charged, though, does that mean you couldn’t register it since you couldn’t get the serial number? Intriguing.

I suppose that doesn’t make much difference, actually. If you can’t power it up, why do you need to register it? On the other hand, what happens when somebody finds a Kindle and the power has discharged? How would you identify it to Amazon?

When I went to charge it, it went into USB mode…but then showed me a symbol and told me that the Kindle wasn’t currently charging. I accidentally plugged it into an improperly powered USB port for charging. That’s nice! Both of those things certainly might have been there before…I think the “stage information” came in with the 3.0.1 update.

So, nothing much to say on this one…which is pretty impressive. 🙂 My notes were there, even my position in an “audiobook” (an MP3 of an Old Time Radio show in my Audible folder) was there. I’ll go visit my internet sites and bookmark them again, and then it will all be set.

Welcome, Pete! 😉

* Full disclosure: TrackItBack sent me some free stickers after I wrote about them the first time. I didn’t ask them to do that, and didn’t know they were going to do it went I wrote the article. It hasn’t affected how I feel about them…I still would have bought the last few I bought.

13 Responses to “Flash! My replacement K3 is here”

I don’t remember if you said you had gotten a wifi-only or a 3G+wifi kindle. If it’s a wifi-only, I was wondering if you could say anything about your experience connecting it to wifi the first time. I’ve seen a number of reports that at least some of the K3 wifi-only kindles won’t connect to a secure wifi network (WEP or WPA) until they have completed registration by talking to Amazon. The workaround so far has been to take it to McDonald’s, Starbucks, library, etc., to let it become fully registered, and then to take it home, at which point it magically is able to connect to the wifi network it has never been able to connect to previously.

The running theory (based on something that was said by someone in CS) is that this happens if the clock is incorrect, and somehow that prevents it from being able to handle the encryption correctly. I don’t know WEP or WPA super well, but it seems like it would be awful troublesome to have a system that used the time as part of the encryption…

If you have a wifi-only kindle, would you be able to test whether the clock is what causes the problem? Note that you can’t manually change the clock when the kindle is not fully registered…

I have a twofer (wi-fi and 3G), but I’m pretty sure I connected through wi-fi. 3G is quite dicey in my house (it was easy with Sprint). I did have to set it up and then do a restart, but I’d give you a…ninety percent it registered through the wi-fi. I use WEP.

This time, by the way, was different from the last time. Last time, I had to go into the manual set up and indicate it was WEP…but I didn’t have to restart. This time, it took the password…but then I had to restart. 🙂

This was before installing 3.0.2, I believe, but I wouldn’t swear to that.

If you keep the box that your kindle ships in, like I do, your serial number is on that box, it’s on the label on the right side above the “made in china” and it starts with FSN. The numbers that follow that match your serial that’s on screen. I save my boxes just in case I need to send them back or if I sell, folks like getting original packaging (learned that from selling iphones), that way the same device is in the box with the matching ID tag. That’s how I think Amazon is able to register kindles without opening the boxes.

Second thing, I’ve had 4 K3 in the span of time that it’s been released. I’ve deregistered mine and reset to default without copying any of my collections. What I notice is this, if you name the replacement kindle the same thing as the damaged one that you’re returning, your collections won’t show in the list, well I should say your most recent device collection. If you name it something else and then go to transfer collections the most recent collections and all priors will be available. But in either case the collections are there after deregistering. I also know this to be the case because I sold my K2 on August 1 and of course had to deregister, so when my K3 arrived on Aug 27 I was able to fire it up and pull down my collections from my K2.

Tuxgirl, the work around for registering with wi-fi might be as easy as turning of encryption for the router temporarily, 5 minutes or so, register the kindle, then forget the network, fire up encryption on the router again and then let the kindle find the encrypted network. Just a thought.

Well, I did order my K3 on August 7, and it took until September 10th for me to get it. 🙂 When one breaks, it’s a little like the mystery for me of when you send the food back in the restaurant. It might have taken a half an hour for them to do it the first time…and you have a full replacement in five minutes. I know part of it is because they move you to the front of the line, but still…makes you wonder. 😉

My original K3 was registered to me on Amazon.com, but I had to manually enter my username/password on the device when it arrived. Same thing with my replacement. Both the defective and the replacement Kindle’s showed up on Amazon.com under my account, but I also had to enter my username/password on it.

FYI, I kept the USB cable that came with the replacement as well as the USB cable and plug that came with the original unit. I only sent back the defective unit itself, per Amazon’s instructions.

Just a tip to anyone else that has to get a replacement Kindle. You can keep the extra cable.

I’m going to respond to both comments in this one, since you might have checked that box now. 🙂

Yes, the K3 has next (and previous) buttons on both sides. Just like the K2, you can also change the orientation around however you want.

There are a couple of big advantages to the K3 for me. The first is wi-fi. I’m about to write a post about one particular aspect that makes that huge, but regardless, it does make a difference for me. Another is the audible menus…that’s not for everybody, but I find it useful.

A disadvatage for me so far is the form factor…I’m still not comfortable holding the K3…I feel a little bit like Gulliver and a Lilliputian, or Kong with Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). It still seems like I have to think about holding it without crushing the little thing or dropping it. 🙂 I think that will fade, though.

I’d say there’s no real hurry to upgrade…oh, although the web browsing is also significantly advanced. I don’t use that a lot, but I have been able to do things with the K3 I couldn’t do with the K2.